


and if i do (perhaps i am myself again)

by alasse



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Fix-It, M/M, Mental Health Issues, People Finally Have Conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 11:19:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18690448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alasse/pseuds/alasse
Summary: Canon-divergent mid-4.13.The cooperative spell failed for a moment - a breath, a millisecond, less than the blink of an eye - and it was enough for the bond to falter, and for the Monster to leave the bottle before it made it inside the Seam.// Q deals with a Monster that wants to stick around and have Starbucks, and he has four long overdue conversations.





	and if i do (perhaps i am myself again)

**Author's Note:**

> I love the fix-it fics everyone is writing. They’re giving me hope, they’re giving me peace. I was thinking about what I wanted to write, and, viscerally, what came out of me was that I wanted to stop it in the middle. I didn’t want a bonfire, I didn’t want burnt peaches. Also, I felt Hale poured so much into the Monster that never got explored and I wanted to try. So, here goes that. 
> 
> A million and one thanks to the amazing [everystarfall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/everystarfall/pseuds/everystarfall) for her heroic betaing and being as wonderful as ever. Title from [Mayakovsky by Frank O'Hara](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53219/mayakovsky).

Quentin threw in the Monster’s sister first - she was the most powerful - and as he prepared to throw in the Monster, it happened.

“Everett.”

“Quentin. That’s mine - hand it over, please.”

Quentin could hardly breathe, and he and Everett raised their hands at the same time.

“You know you can’t cast here,” Alice warned them, panicked.

“I know,” Everett replied, so calmly it chilled Quentin to his bones. “Mutually assured destruction. So you’ll give it to me.” And before they could do anything, he threw the telescope he’d taken to the mirror, shattering it. 

Alice and Penny-23 looked at each other, and Quentin took a quick step back, furiously thinking. The mirror had to be fixed. This - this couldn’t be it. 

“You tried,” Everett told them, walking towards Quentin, as Alice and Penny-23 moved behind him. “You did. I’m impressed. But that bond won’t hold - give it to me before the Monster gets out and everything goes far more shit-shaped.”

“Quentin, I think you need to just-” Alice gasped, from behind Everett.

“Your friend Eliot is safe. I’ll let you go. Just let me handle this”

Quentin glanced behind Everett for a split-second, saw Alice nodding at him. But it wasn’t - he couldn’t. Eliot was safe. Eliot was _safe_ , and the mirror needed to be fixed.

“You’ll become a god,” he said, keeping his hand raised. 

“And you’ve met gods, but I won’t be like them,” Everett replied. “I studied them so I could do better, be better. Trust me.”

Trust him? It was unthinkable. Quentin _had_ met gods, they all had, and just like Fillory, it had been a let-down. Maybe once, Ember and Umber thought like Everett - that they too would be good, and kind, until their petty fights and their boredom and their carelessness made them lock Martin out of Fillory and leave him at the hands of Plover, creating their own destruction by their cruelty. Maybe the Librarians who’d turned into Iris and Bacchus, Heka and Enyalius, maybe they’d thought they could do better, too. It wasn’t an option. The mirror needed to be fixed.

“Okay,” Quentin said softly, stalling. “Okay, I get it. Okay.” 

He put his hands down, going through the options as fast as he could. Everett couldn’t have the bottle. The mirror needed to be fixed. They couldn’t use magic.

“You always were smarter than the books gave you credit for. It’ll be okay, Quentin,” Everett said. “In fact you’ll go down as a hero. I’ll make sure of it.”

 _Go down as a hero_. It was a stupid, throwaway comment, from an insufferably arrogant man. But Quentin latched on to it, because there it was. They _could_ use magic, they just shouldn’t. But the mirror needed to be fixed, and Quentin - Quentin could mend it. He’d go down. He’d go down, but he could mend it. And - and was it so bad, to go down? 

The mirror needed to be fixed.

“Take her. Do it, now,” Quentin told Penny-23.

And as Penny-23 grabbed Alice by the waist, Quentin cast behind his back - a simple spell, a simple tut…

“What did you do?” Everett asked, furious.

“Just a minor mending,” Quentin replied. 

“Give it to me!”

Quentin threw the bottle as the mirror’s cracks began to vanish, hoping he’d timed it right, Alice’s screams ringing in his ears, his heart pounding, something dark and vicious and full of teeth inside his head triumphant, because the mirror had been fixed but it knew the cost, and it was the cost it had been trying to exact ever since Quentin was around fourteen years old. 

Outside, someone - they would never know who - sneezed, or their fingers cramped, or something got in their eye, and they faltered, their fingers missing a motion before they quickly corrected. It was enough. The cooperative spell failed for a moment - a breath, a millisecond, less than the blink of an eye - and it was enough for the bond to falter, and for the Monster to leave the bottle before it made it inside the Seam. Whatever the Mirror World was, it allowed him to take shape - a ghostly shape, a mixture, something of Eliot and the Knight Ora and a blond man Quentin didn’t know all mixed together, and more, a hundred more. 

Everything froze. The mending, the sparks beginning to take shape behind the mirror, Everett, Quentin, Alice, Penny.

“Quentin,” the Monster said. “I didn’t like that bottle thing. I don’t want to stay in there.”

Quentin couldn’t move, couldn’t speak - didn’t understand how the Monster was controlling them, controlling everything.

The Monster looked at Everett. “Hmm. I don’t like you, either.” 

And like he’d done so many times before, to many others, when Quentin was Brian and when Quentin was Quentin again, he waved his hand, and Everett was dead on the floor, his body twitching strangely, all the magic he’d hijacked leaving his body. The Monster then looked at the half-fixed mirror, which reflected the room distortedly while still showing part of the crackling Seam.

“My sister is in there, isn’t she?” he said, head cocked. “I thought she’d be…. Nicer. I thought she’d like to have ice-cream with me, and Starbucks. But she didn’t really like me much. She mostly wanted to kill people.” He turned to look at Quentin again. “I want to have ice-cream. Will you take me?”

And Quentin could suddenly speak again. “I - I’ll take you. But I don’t want you to possess Eliot again, or any of my friends.”

“We can make a golem,” Alice said, voice shaky. “If - if you give us a little time, we’ll make a golem strong enough for you to possess and keep. But we can’t do it in here - if we do magic, it’ll kill us.”

“But Quentin was doing magic,” the Monster said, sounding confused. 

And Alice looked over at Quentin, eyes going to the frozen sparks behind his back - the sparks that were somehow still frozen, the sparks that were going to tear him apart a second ago. “Yes, he was.”

“Hmmm. That was silly, Quentin. I don’t want you to die,” the Monster told him.

And all Quentin could reply was, “The mirror needed to be fixed.”

But in Alice’s eyes, in Penny-23’s, even in the Monster’s, he saw something else. _I was ready to die_.

Before he could explain, say anything more, the Monster took his hand - it was like being held by solid smoke - and then pulled Alice and Penny-23 to him. In a split second, they were back outside the Cottage, alive.

The Monster was a cloud of golden light next to them, expectant.

“I’d like a body now, please.”

+

They moved quickly, gathering ingredients from Professor Lipton’s lab and the living clay, Alice going over the spell under her breath. Quentin wanted to stop her for a moment, talk about what happened and almost happened in the Mirror World, but he didn’t quite know how to talk about it himself. He had no words to offer yet for that look in her eyes, and something inside him was still shivering over the close call, while something else - something darker and assertive, something that had been growing stronger over the last few weeks - was still calling for blood. And the Monster was waiting. 

When everything was ready, Alice, Quentin and Penny-23 made a circle and began casting, magic flowing stronger and easier and crazier than Quentin had ever experienced it. Out of the corner of his eye, Quentin saw Julia and Margo run into the cottage, but they couldn’t stop casting to explain. The golem took shape quickly - it had to be based on somebody, so it had Eliot’s hair but Ora’s skin and the blond man’s general shape - and the Monster took a hold of it as soon as it was done. 

“Hmm. It feels a little… different. More flexible.”

“That’s probably because you’re not fighting anyone else’s consciousness,” Alice said. “It’s only you in there.”

The Monster stared at his hands, shook his legs a little. He still moved as strangely as he had inside Eliot’s body, like he had a very casual relationship with gravity. His eyes flared orange. “Only me. Yes.” 

“What the fuck? Is that the Monster?” Margo asked. “Didn’t we all agree that that asshole went into the Seam?”

“We ran into some, uh, trouble,” Penny-23 said. “We managed to throw the sister inside, but Everett showed up, he broke the mirror. And the bond failed for a second, so the Monster got out.”

“And Quentin tried to die,” the Monster chimed in. “I stopped it, though. Can we have ice-cream now?”

Alice, Julia, and Margo turned to look at Quentin, expressions ranging from dangerously blank, to heartbroken, to angry. 

Quentin opened his mouth once, twice. His hand tugged at his hair. “The mirror-”

“If you say the mirror needed to be fixed one more time, I’ll kill you myself, Quentin,” Alice interrupted him, voice low and vicious, before turning and walking out of the cottage.

Quentin took half a step to follow her, but then looked back at the Monster. 

“I’ll take him to get ice-cream,” Penny-23 said. “You, uh. Yeah, go talk.” 

Quentin nodded, and walked towards the door. He paused between Margo and Julia for a moment. “Is Eliot…”

“He’s gonna be okay,” Margo said. “Lipton sews up an axe wound pretty great. He’s actually gonna be better than you, Coldwater, ‘cause if you think _we’re_ not talking about that little tidbit once you get back from getting chewed out by Alice, you’re very fucking wrong.”

Quentin swallowed, looking away from her and towards Julia, who wouldn’t meet his eyes, her jaw clenched. “Um. Okay.”

He walked outside and made his way to his best guess at where Alice would be - Woof Fountain. _Suicide fountain_ , a voice whispered inside him. Alice was sitting by the edge, looking down into the water. Quentin came to a stop next to her, glanced down at their broken reflections.

“You - we said we’d do it together this time. You said you wanted me in your life,” Alice said, not looking up.

“I - I did. I do.”

She huffed out a breath. “Except you didn’t want to live too much more of it, right? That mending, those sparks… Quentin, they would have _torn you apart_. And you knew that, I told you that.”

“We couldn’t let Everett become a god, Alice,” Quentin said. “I - I had to try. I had to fix it.”

Alice finally looked up, eyes narrowed. “By killing yourself? Being the hero he said you would be, finally?” 

Quentin let out a shaky breath. He didn’t know if he’d done it because of that. He didn’t know if he’d thought of it like sacrificing himself for his friends, or…

“We’ve taken on gods before, Quentin. And we’ve won,” Alice said. “We’ve always found a way. And yet you - you chose that. God, I’m so stupid. I should’ve seen it.”

“Seen what?” Quentin asked, frowning.

“When I got back from the Library, when I saw you - you were. You weren’t okay. And you were angry at me, and you were about to die, so I didn’t push it, and I just - I wanted to help and to make amends so badly I just let it slide.” Alice paused, shook her head. “But you were _not_ okay. And I shouldn’t have just taken everything for granted, what you said in Brakebills South, what you said in Fillory… it was like you were saying goodbye to something. Goodbye to yourself. But I kept letting it slide.”

Quentin took a step back from the fountain, involuntarily. Was that true? He’d been so focused on doing everything to save Eliot, and every defeat, every setback had made him feel so crushed - mistake on mistake piling up, from Iris finding them to not getting to Enyalius in time, to the Monster taking Julia… it had just seemed. Easy, maybe. Fix the mirror. Eliot was safe. Just, cast, and be done with it. 

“I’m sorry, Q,” Alice said.

“Sorry? For what? Alice, I - you don’t have anything to - “

“I do. Because - because I love you, Q, and I wanted to have you back in my life, so I didn’t ask the questions I should have,” Alice said. “I just. We really are good partners, Quentin. And I do love you. But we maybe never learned how to be each other’s friend, and we should have started there. And I. I deserve better, I think. I spent a lot of time thinking about us, and about magic, and about me, when I was locked up in the Library. And I think I was getting there, you know? Figuring out who I am, as me - old me and niffin me and everything in between.” She shrugged, gave him the half-smile he’d always loved, ever since the first time he saw it. “I guess I got a little scared, and when you offered… it maybe seemed like being yours, being your girlfriend, might be easier than just. Living. As me.”

“You’ve always been more than that, Alice. Way too good for me, really,” Quentin said.

“No. No, I don’t think so, Q,” Alice said. “One of the things I figured out, you know, in the Library - trapped, reading everyone’s books - is that nobody’s too good or too bad for someone else. We’re just people. And sometimes we hurt each other, and sometimes we help each other. Sometime we help ourselves, and sometimes… sometimes we hurt ourselves.” She paused, as if bracing herself for the next sentence. “You told me, a long time ago, that your brain breaks sometimes. Q - I think. I think that…”

“You think this is one of those times,” Quentin said, quietly. 

“I - I’m not you. I don’t get to. But, just. You didn’t even pause, Q. You just went ahead and cast,” Alice said, mouth trembling, tears gathering at the corner of her eyes.

Quentin looked back at the fountain, Suicide Fountain. He was tired, and scared. 

The mirror had needed to be fixed.

But maybe Quentin shouldn’t have tried to. 

“I’m sorry, too,” he told Alice. “It just seemed like the only option. It just. _Felt_ , like an option.” He sat down next to her, after a moment. “Can we - can we really be friends, do you think? Without it getting weird?”

Alice shrugged. “I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to figure out how to be myself, Q. I think I can handle figuring out how to be friends with you.”

“Okay.”

They stayed like that, just sitting together quietly, until the silence was broken by Penny-23 and the Monster.

“I don’t want ice-cream any more, Quentin. Will you play with me?”

+

The Monster was a lack-luster card trick student. He enjoyed watching Quentin’s tricks - which he could spruce up even more now that he actually remembered how to use magic and wasn’t only relying on very little ambient - but he became easily frustrated when it came to actually trying to learn them.

Quentin had set them up in the small TV room off the lounge - nobody ever went in there, and the longer they could avoid questions from Fogg or any interaction between Todd and the Monster, the better.

“I think I want to learn how to play bridge,” the Monster said eventually, after unsuccessfully trying to replicate Quentin’s Herrmann pass for the third time.

“Uh... bridge?”

“The girls who are gold play it. I like them.”

“When did you watch the Golden Girls?”

Before the Monster could answer, Margo walked in. “As much as I’d like to know whether Darth over here is a Blanche or a Dorothy, we’ve got some bigger questions to ask.”

“Darth,” the Monster echoed in a soft voice.

Margo sat down in front of them, and Quentin noticed she had her pirate eye patch back on.

“Is your eye okay?” he asked. He hoped that her fairy eye hadn’t been screwed up by how weird magic was acting.

“What? Oh, this,” she said, gesturing to her face. “Yes, it’s fine - it’s in Eliot’s room. I’m not letting that fucker out of my sight for a second.” She cleared her throat, and turned to the Monster with a stern face. “Now. I need to know what you plan on doing. Because I gotta tell you, I didn’t much like it when you wore my best friend around like a suit and went on a murder spree. Although, having spoken to the Binder, I get that those gods were major dicks to you, I do. But more murder is a no-no.”

The Monster looked down for a second, looking oddly vulnerable, whispering “no-no” under his breath, before meeting Margo’s eyes again. “I want. I want Starbucks, and a corn-dog. I want Quentin to teach me bridge. I want a name.” He paused. “I also want to know why they hurt me.”

Margo glanced at Quentin for a moment, before looking back at the Monster. “Okay. We can work on some of those things. Alice is great at research, we can ask her to help.”

“Ugh. Research,” the Monster said, twisting his mouth.

“Hey, I know, but it’s the only way to get some answers,” Margo shrugged. “Now, what kind of name where you thinking of?”

“Jennifer?” the Monster suggested.

“You know, normally I’d tell you to go right ahead and fuck the hetero-patriarchy, but I think you’ll get more questions about your pronouns than you’re ready to answer with that name. How about... Ben?”

“Ben?” Quentin and the Monster asked at the same time.

“It’s short, it’s simple - it can do while we figure out what your name used to be. It’s bound to come up in the research.”

“Ben,” the Monster repeated. “Yes.”

“Great,” Margo said, standing up and fixing her skirt. “Now, I have some things to talk about with Quentin here, so we’re going to leave you watching an educational show. Pay attention, okay? It’s mostly about how to deal with feelings other than by murder.”

With that, she made a hand motion towards the TV, and Queer Eye came on.

“Really?” Quentin asked, standing up as well.

“What? You should do some watching yourself, Q, take some style tips. You’ve pretty much been wearing the same t-shirt and hoodie for a month.”

And it was said good-naturedly - as good-naturedly as Margo ever got, anyway - but it struck Quentin, because. Because that was one of the things they’d always asked him, wasn’t it? The therapists, in the hospital. Losing ability or interest in taking care of oneself. Something must have shown on his face, because Margo suddenly looked stern and worried again. She placed a hand on his arm, and turned to the Monster again.

“Okay, Ben. Watch this carefully, alright? Listen to Karamo, and practice your French tuck. But if you decide you want to learn how to cook, we’ll get Josh to teach you. Antoni is very cute, but he really can’t do much more than avocado toast.”

The Monster - Ben - nodded, already absorbed in what was happening on screen, and Margo pulled Quentin out of the room.

They sat down on the stairs, like so many times before, and Margo whipped out a hand until a bottle of wine zoomed over from the bar towards her. She opened it, took a sip, and passed it to Quentin. She looked at him carefully as he drank, and it made Quentin a little nervous - no matter how long he’d known her, how long they’d been friends, having Margo Hanson’s full regard was always a little intimidating.

“Okay, Q. So, let’s start at the beginning. What the fuck?”

Quentin glanced down, passed the bottle from one hand to the other. “I just. Everett showed up, and we were so close, but he smashed the mirror and I… I just had to fix it. I felt like I had to fix it.”

“But you knew what it would do to you, in the Mirror World. Alice must have reminded you,” Margo said.

“She did. I knew.” Quentin shrugged, tried to come up with the right words to explain again, but could only hear Alice, could only hear himself, saying _your brain breaks sometimes_. “It seemed like what I should do.”

Margo just looked at him for a moment. “Quentin, do you realize what it would have done to him, if he’d woken up and you were…” she trailed off, glancing away. “Fuck, you little shit, do you realize what it would have done to me?”

“I - I didn’t think, it was-“

“I never told you, did I, what I always told El?” Margo interrupted. “The difference between a live hero and a dead moron is a stupid decision. And I know we haven’t talked in a while, Q, between getting ourselves erased and me getting thrown back to Fillory by Ember, but.” She stopped, shifted a little closer to Quentin. “I thought we’d settled this, when we refused to let you be the Monster’s jailer for the rest of your life - we need you around, you asshole. Do you think Eliot and I just go around making friends all the time? This - all of this - it only makes sense because you’re the one that’s brought us together.”

“Margo…” Quentin protested, feeling the tears starting to come, strangling his voice.

“I mean it, Q,” Margo said, moving slightly forward and placing a soft hand on the side of his face. “Fucking hell, who else could make the most terrible monster ever created wind up wanting to be his friend and to play card tricks? I’ve always said it, Coldwater - you care like nobody else. You believe like nobody else. And we fucking need that. We need you.”

Quentin couldn’t really think of something to say to that - he wanted to reject Margo’s words, but also hoard them, listen to them over and over until they rang true somehow, until they felt true. He knew - somewhere in the back of his mind, in the part of him that had gone through four therapists - that he was probably in a place where taking positive things about himself at face value was almost impossible, and he just. He didn’t want to ruin it. So he just raised a hand to cover Margo’s on his face, and nodded.

Margo nodded back, and then stood up, all business. “Right. Let’s go back and see whether Ben has learned some valuable lessons from the Fab Five.”

They trooped back into the TV room, and, after a couple of episodes, were eventually joined by Alice, Julia, Penny-23, and Kady. Quentin had the strange experience of watching Kady try to hide the fact that she was crying over a particularly poignant shelf Bobby built, while Alice, Penny-23, and Julia helped the Monster - Ben - attempt the French tuck with a t-shirt screen printed with a farting unicorn.

Everyone eventually went off to sleep, although the Monster convinced Penny-23 to take him for one last coffee run.

+

An hour later, Quentin was lying down on his bed, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep.

It felt - he felt - like he was fourteen, and sixteen, and eighteen, and twenty-two, and twenty-four all over again. The Monster outside, loudly slurping a Starbucks frappuccino, nothing to the monster inside. 

And just like she had many times before, Julia walked in without knocking, and lay down next to him.

“Hey, Jules,” Quentin whispered.

He felt her shift slightly next to him, taking something out of her pocket, and he was suddenly faced with an orange prescription bottle he hadn’t seen for some time.

“I just. I had Penny go into the city this afternoon, fill out your prescription. Just in case you - just in case,” Julia said quietly. 

Quentin reached out slowly for the bottle, hand shaking ever so slightly, trying as hard as he could not to think of it as a defeat. Not succeeding too much. 

“I also talked to Professor Lipton. She said she had someone you could talk to, a magician who went into psychiatry - apparently the Psychic kids have a specialty?” Julia continued. “She told me that we should really stop taking Dean Fogg’s advice so much. For someone who thinks people shouldn’t take meds, he’s too much of an only-sometimes functional alcoholic.”

Quentin huffed out a laugh, clutching the pills to his chest. “Thanks, Jules. I - I really appreciate it. I’m sorry we have to go through this again.”

“I’m not,” Julia said, something fierce in her voice. “I’m not, Q. I’ll go through this a thousand times with you, as long as you promise to be here to go through it.”

“Yeah. I - I don’t know if I can make that promise, just now. But I want to want to make it,” Quentin said.

“That’s more than enough, Q. That’s a start,” Julia said, and shifted even closer to Quentin, resting her head by his arm.

They were quiet for a while, both of them now staring at the ceiling, and Quentin could almost see a map of Fillory up there, just like under their table. They’d gone through so much together - so much good, so much bad. It was harrowing to think that he’d almost had a last moment with Julia, that after so much history together, it had almost stopped, without him ever being able to talk to her about what the Binder had said, or what the Monster’s sister had done to her, or, really, what the Monster had done to him. 

But now he had time, and he didn’t want to waste it.

“How - how are you, Jules?” he asked. “With being human?”

“I’m pissed,” Julia replied immediately. “Heartbroken. I - I went through so fucking much for magic, Q. And now it’s been taken from me, again? I just. I don’t get it. If magic is supposed to come from pain, I don’t get why it isn’t back, when I’m feeling like this.”

“We’ll get it back for you, somehow,” Quentin promised. “We’ve done crazier things, right? I - I’ll work on my brain, and we’ll work on your magic.”

“ _We’ll_ work on your brain. You don’t have to do it alone, Q. I’m here. We’re all here,” Julia said.

It echoed Alice’s promise to work on them being friends, Margo’s assurance that they needed him. But most of all, it was Julia - his oldest friend, his partner in crime - saying she’d be there again, even while she knew how bad it could get. And that meant everything.

“Yeah,” Quentin whispered after a while. “Yeah, I’m starting to get that.”

+

The next morning, Quentin walked into the kitchen to see Alice reading four books and a scroll at the same time, a cup of tea gone cold in front of her and a piece of toast in her hand which she seemed to have forgotten. The Monster was sitting next to her, playing Candy Crush on her phone.

“Uh, Alice?”

Alice startled at his voice and dropped the toast on the scroll.

“Oh, shit!” she exclaimed, trying to wipe off the butter. “Zelda will kill me if this gets damaged - it’s from the late Mycenaean period.”

“Why are you reading something from the late Mycenaean period?” Quentin asked.

“Well, Margo told me yesterday, after you went to bed, that the Monster - uh, Ben, sorry, “ she said in an aside to the Monster, who didn’t look up from the phone, “that he was looking for his name and who he was? And we didn’t really focus on that, before, we mostly just took the Knight Ora’s word that he was the monster at the end of the world. But with what the Binder told Julia, and how weird the old gods were about it all… I just figured there could be more.”

Quentin thought it over as he poured himself coffee. “It makes sense, yeah. Do you have any leads?”

“Well, the Titans, I think? Or their children, anyway,” Alice replied, biting her lip. “Just, from. How Ben is, generally, or was, anyway, and how his sister acted… I think they might be Kratos and Bia.”

“Uh… right. I have no idea who they are.”

“He’s the divine personification of strength; she’s the divine personification of force, or anger, depending on your translation,” Alice said. “I mean - I have to double check a few sources, and I still haven’t quite figured out how they got from being that into what the Librarians did to them, I’ll have to get Julia to tell me everything the Binder said again, but… it’s something?”

“Why would the Librarian gods make him forget that, though? Why hide his name?” Quentin asked.

Before Alice could reply, Penny-23 appeared in the middle of the kitchen, startling the Monster into dropping the phone. 

“Quentin - Margo sent me to tell you that Eliot’s awake,” Penny-23 told him, eyes wide.

Quentin looked back at Alice and the Mon- _Ben_ , who was grumbling under his breath about dropping a level. 

“Go,” Alice said, eyes wide and waving a hand. “We can figure this out. Go see him, Q.”

Quentin made his way to the school hospital as quickly as he could, but paused before entering the ward where Eliot was recovering. Julia had already asked, but it was important - it _felt_ important - for him to do this for himself, and before he talked to Eliot. He made his way to Professor Lipton’s office, and knocked.

“Yes?”

“Uh, Professor Lipton, hi,” Quentin said, running a hand through his hair. 

“Hello, Quentin,” she greeted him, smiling for a moment before her brow furrowed. “Is everything alright? Eliot okay? None of the alarm charms have gone off.”

“No, I, uh. I think he’s okay - I mean, I haven’t been in to see him just yet, but. Uh, he’s awake?”

“Oh, good. I’ll be in to see him soon,” Professor Lipton said. “Can I help you with anything else?”

Quentin shuffled slightly on his feet, backwards and forwards for a second, before taking a step deeper inside the office and forcing himself to sit down. “Um. Julia told me. She said she’d talked to you, a little, about. About therapists?”

“Ah. Yes, of course,” Professor Lipton nodded, taking out an address book and waving a finger at it, making the pages shuffle dizzyingly quick until they stopped. Quentin could see words glowing on the page. “I’m sorry I hadn’t reached out to you about this before, Quentin. Dean Fogg was somewhat… reluctant for faculty to interfere with you and your friends for some time - the Beast and Jane Chatwin and all that hogwash. But I should have still made sure you knew the Psychics figured out some time ago that magic isn’t a cure-all for mental illness, just like there are some diseases of the body that can’t be taken care of with a spell.”

“Like cancer,” Quentin whispered..

Professor Lipton smiled sadly. “Yes. Like cancer.”

Quentin took a shaky breath. “Okay. So, uh. Those therapists, they’re. They’re magicians?”

“That’s right. You can discuss being mind-wiped by a quasi-fascist library organization and your overzealous University Dean while one of your best friends was hijacked by a monster and a couple of your friends were off in a magical land to your heart’s content,” Professor Lipton said. “Trust me, Quentin - I’ve been to them. They’ll help.”

“You?” 

“Well. Let’s just say I wasn’t in the best place, after that Mayakovsky nonsense,” Professor Lipton shrugged. “You gave me a hand then, remember? Let me give you a hand now.”

She tore out the glowing page from her address book, and offered it to Quentin. It was only a piece of paper, but as Quentin took it, he felt it was heavy somehow.

Heavy with anxiety, maybe, with fear. But also heavy with promise. 

“Thank you,” Quentin said.

“You’re welcome,” Professor Lipton replied, smiling slightly. “Now, I do think you have a patient of mine to visit.”

+

Quentin walked into Eliot’s ward slowly, quietly. His eyes went immediately to the bed, where Eliot was sitting up, Margo sitting by his side, talking to him softly. Quentin wanted to take a moment to center himself, to figure out what he would say. But on his next step, he crashed into a table, surgical instruments falling to the floor with a clatter - because of course they did - and Eliot and Margo turned to look at him.

“Q…” Eliot said softly.

Quentin opened his mouth, closed it. Words weren’t coming. Eliot was _Eliot_. Eliot was okay. _Eliot was okay_. The relief was so intense, to see him awake and himself, Quentin felt almost faint. 

“I’ll leave you two to talk,” Margo said, taking her eye from Eliot’s bedside table. It was an unspoken gesture of trust - either Margo or her eye had been on Eliot every second since they’d gotten back from the woods - and it made Quentin feel good just as much as it terrified him.

Quentin walked forwards to take her place at the side of Eliot’s bed, and without stopping to think, as natural as it had been for three years, for fifty, he took Eliot’s hand in his, and just. Looked his fill. That pale, angular face, the hazel eyes that at last, at last held nothing but his best friend, his king, his one-time lover - nothing but _Eliot_. And Eliot looked back, eyes moving quickly through Quentin’s face, a slight frown the only sign to indicate that Eliot had noticed Quentin’s eyes bruised from lack of sleep, his messy hair. 

“You’re too thin,” was Eliot’s final assessment. “I mean. You’re fucking beautiful, but you look like shit.”

Quentin had to laugh, only a little, feeling blood rush to his cheeks over the compliment. Of all the things to notice. By one of the few who’d notice. “You’re one to talk, El. I tried - we tried - to get him to eat more, but. Uh. It was kind of hard, unless it was frappuccinos or corn-dogs.”

“You did fine, Q,” Eliot said softly. “You did too much.”

Quentin frowned, ready to protest, and noticed that Eliot’s hand in his was shaking ever so slightly, that Eliot’s eyes were shiny with unshed tears. And he understood.

“She told you.”

“I made her tell me,” Eliot confirmed. “It’s Bambi, Q. I always know when she’s holding something back.” 

“El…” 

Eliot closed his eyes, tears escaping at last. “No, Q. Don’t. Don’t try to make it better.” He opened his eyes again, took a shaky breath. “I’m so sorry. This was me. I - I was the one who fucked up, at the Castle at the End of the World, the one who changed the plans and didn’t tell you. I was so sure that the god-killing bullet would work, so sure I could do your promise to the Knight one better. And then I got myself possessed and a Monster held you hostage for months. Because of me. What you did in the Mirror World, Q, what almost happened… it’s on me.”

Eliot was squeezing Quentin’s hand so hard that it hurt, but Quentin didn’t move, couldn’t, wouldn’t. But he refused to let Eliot’s words stand, and forced himself to speak, begged his broken brain to let it come out right, for once. “No, Eliot. It’s not on you. It’s not on anything. You didn’t do this to me. Not even the Monster did this to me. I - I.” Quentin stopped, took a breath, started again. “I have depressive disorder. You have a not-too-healthy relationship to alcohol. Alice has a not-too-healthy relationship to magic. Julia craves knowledge so much she’d die for it, Margo can be so angry it chokes her. Life is heavy, El. It isn’t done to us. It just is.”

Eliot was quiet, looking down at their joined hands on the bed, and Quentin. Quentin loved him. And couldn’t believe, again, that he’d almost. He’d almost not had this moment, whatever came of it. 

“Yeah, El?”

Eliot nodded, something like a smile trying to come from trembling lips. “Yeah. Okay. Okay, Q.”

“I’m gonna get - uh. Well. Better is relative. But Jules got me my pills, and Professor Lipton knows some magical therapists. So. I’m gonna try,” Quentin said. “But you - you have to try to let go of your guilt, Eliot. ‘Cause it’s going to hurt you, if you don’t.”

“Jesus, Q,” Eliot breathed out.

“What?”

“You. You’re so brave,” Eliot said. “And it never stops surprising me." Quentin shook his head at that - brave, come on. “No, you are, Q. Trust me,” Eliot continued, moving forward slightly to make his point. "So - with the caveat that I know it’s probably shitty timing, and that we both have a lot of. Healing. To do. I need to tell you this, because I promised myself, and I promised you.”

“What, El?” Quentin asked.

Eliot pulled on his hand, made him shift even closer. “You asked me to give us a shot, a long time ago. And I said no. I said no because I was scared, and because when I’m scared, I run. But you need to know - you _need_ to know - that I love you, Quentin Coldwater,” he said, something ancient and bright and pained in his voice. “And if Fillory and those fifty years is all we got, I can live with it. But when you can - if you can - give me another shot. I’ll be here.”

Quentin looked at Eliot, at his wide eyes, sincere and hopeful, at his dear, dear face. He remembered, almost through a mirror, darkly, how it hard hurt, to hear him say that it wasn’t them, when they had a choice. It wasn’t that the words healed that hurt, exactly, not like they could take it back. But they mended it, somehow. And it wasn’t really the best time, Eliot was right. They were both too much worse for the wear, and they had to deal with the Monster’s real identity, and probably figure out why magic was exploding all over the place. But - but they had time. And they’d almost hadn’t. 

It was enough to make Quentin close the little remaining distance between them, and, just like he had a life-time ago, say, “Hey,” before he kissed Eliot.

And, just like the last time, Eliot kissed him back.

+++

It would have been easy if they’d had all the time in the world to heal, to settle, to figure things out. But nothing had been easy since Quentin first walked into Brakebills, so it was really asking too much for it to be any different now. 

The Library came calling first, Zelda asking for Alice and Alice accepting only on the condition that she be named co-head librarian along with Kady, and that the Hedges be given free access. Margo went back to Fillory only to find the magic that had been spilled when Everett died had screwed with the timeline entirely and moved it 300 years into the future and under the control of a Dark King, and Fen and Josh were missing. The old gods finally decided to take an interest on the fact that the Monster was still walking around, and they’d managed to hold them back only by having him swear on the River Styx that he wouldn’t try to kill them - if they didn’t kill him either. Alice and Julia had ended up figuring out the loophole: the River Styx was the Monster’s mother, and whatever oaths were sworn in her name held enough strength to force even Zeus to comply. 

Julia was still angry at Penny-23, even while she still wanted him around, and it was generally awkward and sort of made Quentin feel like he should offer to beat him up? Which was probably the worst idea ever. Anyways Julia would probably get in way more punches than him if she actually wanted to, really. Eliot was finally walking without too much pain, although he liked to use his cane anyway because according to him it made him seem dapper, and Quentin was going to therapy two times a week. As for Quentin and Eliot, they were still taking it slow, but slow with Eliot was relative for Quentin because, well, he had eyes. So.

It was life, as messy as ever.

“I’ve been thinking about something, Jules,” Quentin said. It was a sunny day in spring, and they’d decided to have a cook-out in the garden of the Physical Kids’ cottage, just because. “I - I don’t think it makes sense, that magic comes from pain. I mean - _obviously_ I’m not the person who’s ever suffered most in the world, not even close, but it’s. It’s gotten dark. And I’m only just okay, at magic. And from what Fogg and Jane told us, 39 times before this you were basically Hermione, without ever running into Reynard. And, you know - I - I lived a whole life, once, with Eliot. We had a kid, I got married, I grew old. I was happy. And I was just as okay at magic as I was here, not worse. So I don’t think it’s pain, really. I think it may just be emotion. Good, bad, dark, happy. I think it just has to be... real.”

Julia looked at him for a moment, a furrow between her eyebrows that always meant she was thinking hard, and then looked down at her hands. She moved her fingers slowly for a few seconds, and then threw them up at the sky. Fireworks.

“Real,” she echoed. 

“You two really need to learn another spell,” Eliot said, coming from behind them to sit on the grass next to Quentin.

“Shut up. It’s our thing,” Quentin told him, smiling.

“Oh, your thing?” Eliot asked. “And do we have a thing, Q? Are we at _thing_ stage yet?”

“You guys are gross. I’m going to show this to Professor Lipton,” Julia said, shoving Quentin in the shoulder before getting up.

“Let me know what she says?” Quentin asked.

“Of course,” Julia said, giving him a smile over her shoulder before walking away.

Quentin glanced after her until she was gone, and then turned to see Eliot staring at him, a strangely intent look on his face. “Everything okay, El?”

“Everything okay with you?” Eliot countered. He’d been doing this more often, since. Just checking in, asking. 

“Yeah,” Quentin replied. “I mean, no. Alice says she’s getting some pushback from some of the old Librarians over Kady and the Hedges having a say, and I still don’t know if we made the right choice in helping Ben - I mean - Kratos, and y’know, Fillory is a fucking mess, because it always is... But I like Dr. Ramirez, and Julia may have her magic back, and. You.”

“Me?” Eliot asked, eyebrows raised.

“Always you.”

Eliot glanced down, something that looked suspiciously like a blush on his cheeks - and wasn’t that something Quentin never thought he’d see, Eliot Waugh looking _embarrassed_ \- before looking up again. “Always you, too, Q.” 

And then he leaned towards Quentin and kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed him.


End file.
